Infinate signs that you're getting old

I don't know who "they" are. Nor do I know who "They" think they are. Like POS predictors that modify the gas-prices, I've heard throughout most my life "They say that..."
They?
Hmmm...
They who? and they what?
They say that feeling old is a state of mind.
They say that the older you get, the less sleep you need.
They say, blah-blah-blah.

Well, some of it make sense - like the 'feeling old is a state of mind'. However, your state of mind can also be affected by your age, physical condition, your past (and whatever 'they' say)

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting up in bed, struggling to wake up so I could face the day and get the kids ready for school. My 5 year old daughter peeks her head around the corner of the door as I sat there, and as soon as she saw that I was upright, she bounded cheerily into the room, and threw herself up onto the bed (my wife was already downstairs, about to leave for work).
"Hi Daddy!" she cheerily exclaimed in the way that only a 5 year old can so early in the morning. As I write this, I recall that I used to be a 'morning person'. I grunted a response.
"Can you come downstairs please?"
I slowly inhaled, as I wanted to be sure that I could speak the words needed with out any undue stress upon my system and cause a blackout. My voice sounded as weak as someone who had been awake for two days.
"Yea..." I sighed out.
"Okay, Daddy," she said in a most satisfied manner. She then slid off the bed and said "I'll just show myself out." and she skipped out the bedroom door.
- Where did she learn *that* phrase??

Along with other folks with serious injuries or arthritis, I can tell what the barometer is doing. That day was a rainy-stormy day, and fatigued and achy is how I felt all day. So I got my hair cut, thinking it would lighten the mood - evidence that she culled the dark hairs, letting the white hairs become more prominent.
What do you call that color? Gray? Charcoal? Black-n-Silver? Ash? Refined Graphite? Depressing? Dye-Time? Salt and pepper (Emphasis on the salt)?

And I also recall having "Senior Moments". We lost the phone last week. My wife eventually located it: She informed me that I placed the phone in the cupboard. (Where we store the dishes).

Like everyone else, I'm discovering that my priorities have changed. In the past, something could have made my jump out of my seat and leap over to the scene with more fluidity and grace than an Olympic gymnast. But now, I swivel my head around, watch for a moment or two, bespeak something along the lines of "Huh." then draw my attention away.

And there is more...much more. Perspective, physical deformations, opinions of beauty and lust, but I'm going to close the blog for the day. I'm tired (most parents are). It's Sunday AM, the day my wife and I try to sleep in. However, our 9yr old son had other plans. Before 7AM my 9yr old son stood in our bedroom, leaning back-and-forth making the floor creak until I woke up.
...and now I hear the 5yr old coming downstairs...

Today we head out to some friends of ours with 3 kids. Younger than I by 6 years or so, they also have a teenager. (I can't wait to talk about the gray in his beard).

And so, with a final adieu for the day, I give you a cartoon displaying age...




...Here Endith The Blog...

Ooops in the Kitchen

There are times when you make a mistake and its bad. Sometimes its funny the moment it happens, sometimes it is funny later on. And other times...it is never funny. Ever.
Fortunately, the small incident that I am going to relate unto you was not a mistake, it was an accident. (There *is* a difference...) Often I have joked to my family about how I could should host my own TV Cooking show. Naturally, a child is rather easy to impress, but I have also impressed adults with my brilliant hand-and-eye coordination and displays confidence in the kitchen.
But occasionally, an error occurs. Did mention that these happen all over, and come in various packages...big, small, disastrous, hilarious. Many years ago, when I was still a lad in school, the father of one of my friends passed onto me a quote he had made up: "The severity of your mistake is directionally proportionate to the amount of people watching."
Only one of my children saw this little incident...so it couldn't have been bad.
I have been a trainer/instructor in *every* job I've held, and as such; I can generally explain things in a simple and easy fashion as I do them. So, I enjoy explaining things for the 'cooking show' whether I am making a white-cheese garlic pasta sauce from scratch or providing 'kid-food' via a box of Mac-n-Cheese. Example =
Why do you cut the butter into small pieces?
- So it will melt faster.
Why do you rip the box seam on the top, instead of using the [Press Here] area on the side.
- Because the 'press here' area doesn't work (next time I made the dish for them, I showed them the perforation lines and demonstrated what happens - when I press, the upper corner of the box caves in...it doesn't 'separate & open'.
What are you doing with the bag?
- I call it "flapping". I hold on to the edge I'm going to open the bag form, then flap it back and forth to send all the mix to the bottom of the bag, making it easier and cleaner to open and pour in.
etc...etc...

So this skill translates well to my ability to either explain what I am doing as a free-flowing process, or holding a conversations with someone while I prepare a meal. Two day's ago, I was holding a conversation with my son. He wanted Mac-n-Cheese, so the water was approaching a boil, the butter & milk were on the counter, and I was 'flapping' the sauce-mix bag. Suddenly, I heard a tearing sound and I was no longer holding on to the bag. Standing next to the stove-top with a shocked and bemused look on my face, I tried to track its trajectory as it made an arc from my hand to bounce off the clear insulation-film on the window above the sink, then ricochet off the Wustoff block of knives and landed on the counter. (Fortunately, it landed heavy side down - open side up~!)
I did not marvel at my fortune for long - it immediately became clear that a diminutive nuclear fallout was in process. Tiny orange granules were cascading down on me, the coffee pot, the sink, the counter, microwave, and the small rug we have on the floor in-front of the sink.

Cleaning up wasn't difficult...just time consuming. All in all, it a moderatley successful Sunday.

...here endith the blog...

The Earth as a Philosophers Stone

Tonight at snack-time the conversation became geologically technical.
My 9yr-old boy (9 years old...Oh my = is he a "tween' now...?) decided to inform his 5 year old sister about the Earth.
He used such phrases as -
"You would think," and "But in reality,"
Pretty impressive in their own right.
But for those of you with children, you know that the rest of it was skewed.
Right? Right~!
He related a tale of how the Earths crust is where the grass grows, the Mantle; a subterranean mass of hot molten lava, and the core? That is obviously a sphere of solid metal. He went on to inform her that the core is composed of iron, nickel and other minerals.
Naturally, she asked if pennies and quarters came from Earth's crust too.
"Not the coins themselves," he informed her, "just the minerals they are made of."
"Gosh!" she said, dutifully impressed.
"Yea, wouldn't it be great," I could tell he was on roll now; he was in the spotlight (with his audience of one), "if the minerals of nickels and other money rotated up through the magma, and we made it into coins?"
At this point I probably should have made a correction or two, but they were so involved and so animated, I didn't think it right to stop them. Shortly, they had basically described the precipitation process (how water evaporates, becomes clouds, rains, evaporates, etc), only using minerals that form coins. Nothing else...just coins.

Actually, I was very impressed with their imagination. It was...rather hypnotic, and as Leonardo DaVinci was credited for saying "The Earth supplies us with everything we need at the price of labor."

...here endith the blog...

This morning the kids were playing with lego's, then started to draw one huge action scene on a large sheet of paper. They've come a long way in their Star Wars terminology. General Grevious is not a sad army-man. At one time, I did try to explain the concept of a cybernetic organism to them but that got lost on them. I did a better job explaining Godzilla. (see my Feb 5th post "Sorry I was late.")

I let the kids watch and play the LEGO STAR WARS game for the wii before they saw any of the movies. I didn't realize what kind of a skewed influence they would have had going from the 2nd medium, to the original. I should have known...With the fake interactivity TV broadcasts to children (characters on-screen prompt the child to say their name, guess what letter comes after G, etc), she believes that the TV tube truly is an interactive experience, and she will literally run into another room shrieking when something scares her. (I wonder if this will carry on into her adult life. Will she be talking to the movie screen? Or yelling to characters on stage?!)

Since my son had already seen the movies, I was comfortable with her watching them on her own with out him getting jealous. Naturally, we started watching the movies in order of their release (not in order of story-line).

If I may point out a few of the highlights;
She cheered when she first saw R2D2 (R2D2 is her favorite character).

"Yay! Its 'Stormy Stormtrooper'!" ("Stormy" is the name of her Lego Stormtrooper.)

"Oh-oh, remember," she yelled with great urgency at the characters on the TV, "Shoot them twice, and their hearts will pop-out!"

Then she asks me....
"Dad, is that a good Stormtrooper?"
- No.
"How about that one?"
- No.
"That one?"
- No.
"Which one is?"
- None.
"Why?"
- Because they work for Darth Vader.
"Why?"
- Because he's a bad-Jedi and he's their boss.
"Why is he bad?"
...that conversation was reminiscent of my Feb 5th post "Sorry I was late.".

When Ben and Luke arrive at the Cantina at Mos Eisley=
"Dad, look! Its the bonus room!"

"Dad, why can't Luke do the Jedi-Super-Slam?"
- Because in the hierarchy of Jedi Knights, Luke is a wuss.

And then we watched Empire Strikes Back.
I'm not going to go into that sordid mess...I have an unopened bottle of Merlot calling me...

So here endith the Blog...

Since the flu bug is over...

Well...my daughter has fully recovered from the stomach flu. I was awake for 41+ hours. Not a record - not by a long shot...but still. For us older parents, I was a little crabby over the next few days.
Naturally...my wife picked up a variant of the strain. Where as the baby girl had an extremely volatile version that lasted a few days, the variant my wife picked up wasn't exceptionally violent or robust...however, it has lasted over a week so far!
No body likes to get sick, but what really irritated her was the fact that she had gotten sick a day before our son was scheduled for surgery...

The surgery had been scheduled for 3:30PM, with the Pre-Op check-in at 2:00 PM. The phone call I got the morning of, requesting if we could arrive 30 minutes early as it appeared the Dr. is running ahead of schedule was pleasing! Naturally I agreed.
So, at 12-noon I pulled him from school and away we drove to the hospital.
Having been a visitor to hospitals in the past, I knew enough to grab the back-pack and stuff a couple books and my computer notebook in it. Once we arrived and found a parking spot (at the top level of the ramp), I strapped on the heavy backpack, and we made our pilgrimage to the admitting/registration desk.

We were not the first in line once we arrived naturally, there was an older couple at the front of the line, standing a few feet behind them was a man, who appeared to be in his mid 30's and immediately behind him was a woman, in her upper 20's, then us. As we waited, a woman who appeared to have lived over 40 hard years, showed up as an elderly gentleman with a couple packages got into line behind her.
The elderly couple at the front of the line continued to work with the receptionist as my son and I waited. Of course, standing in line and being polite for 30 seconds was too much for the woman behind us. She pulled out her got and began loudly talking. I noticed the elderly couple were getting visitor badges. To acquire a badge constitutes a procedure of the individual taking a couple steps back to a blue star on the floor which was just beyond the edge of the rug. Then the web-cam housed in a metal container (bolted to the desk to prevent anyone from stealing it?), takes their picture, then the individual moves up, gets their badge. The elderly couple were then given directions on where they needed to be, they smiled and sincerely thanked the woman at the desk before merrily going on their way.

And as the woman behind me prattled loudly on her cell phone, oblivious to the world around her, the man next in line stepped up to the desk; the rest of us politely remaining off the rug, giving the individual a three foot space for privacy as well room should he need to get his picture taken for a badge.

Once he was finished, he went on his way and the woman next in line stepped up, my son and I took one step forward, maintaining our position off the rug as the woman on her cell phone kept on speaking as though her words were addressing the G7 summit. As she pontificated, she refused to remain still, and it sounded as thought she was literally one foot from my ear on occasions. I would turn towards her yet incline/lean my head and upper body away to let her know that she was being overly close.

Then it was our turn. My son and I stepped up to the desk - and so did the woman behind us. I had to ask the employee behind the desk to repeat herself more than once because the woman behind me on her cell phone continued to project her words as though she was on stage. I actually had to turn away from the desk, looked at the woman on the phone, say "Excuse me," then indicated the edge of the rug three feet back then glanced back at her before I once again turned my attention to the employee at the desk.
The woman's lips never broke stride as she looked at me with the combination of annoyance and disdain that you would give an insect. She obviously didn't understand what I was suggesting - she was too caught up in her own little soap opera, attempting to vocally overpower everyone in the huge lobby with her pontification (As I write this out, I wonder if there really was someone on the other end. Perhaps she was undertaking an experiment of rudeness?)
Then, the hospital employee behind the desk asked if I had a visitation badge, and when I replied that I did not, she stated those magic words:
"Well, lets take one. Please step back to the blue star at the edge of the rug."

I stepped backwards in a manner that did not hide any determination. What I had expected to happen, did. The woman was still blathering on her cell phone, oblivious to what was going on...I had bumped into her. I stopped, looked at where my backpack hit her, then at her with a gaze of irritated disappointment.
With an off-hand manner, she somehow manged to slide an "Excuse me," at my direction without interrupting her dribble.
I scowled slightly at her before taking my position on the blue star for my badge.
As I went back to the desk, I noticed that the woman didn't follow me and that her voice wasn't quite as loud as it had been (she was probably telling her lonely friend on the other line how rude I was).

I suspect that she is the type of individual that would compose a movie review via texting while driving on the freeway during rush hour.

...here endith the blog...